Cooking with Animal Fats

I had a long-winded draft of this post written and I really hated it so I'm just going to get right down to it: animal fats are very good for cooking with!

Growing up when margarine was still considered healthy, even the word "lard" was enough to induce gagging when we heard it as kids, though I didn't really know what it even was - it just sounded gross. But fast forward into adulthood where I started saving the bacon fat for frying eggs, which turned out to be a gateway.

I don't like the strong smell of beef tallow so I rarely use it unless I have some extra from making soup, but pork lard and chicken fat (chicken fat is commonly referred to as "schmaltz") are

Lard actually doesn't have much of a flavour (you could use it in sweet applications like pie crust), but schmaltz is definitely very chickeny which is great especially if you're browning onions etc. to eventually use in soup with a chicken broth base. Baked oven fries or hashbrowns are very, very good when you use animal fat. I am definitely prone to bastardize classically vegan dishes like falafel by frying in pork lard.

I cook a lot of vegetarian meals which can be made to taste richer when the base fat is chicken or pork. Animal fat also has a much higher smoke point than vegetable fat which means you are less likely to burn things if you are sauteeing/frying/roasting at high heat. It also makes whatever you're cooking MUCH crispier and (in my opinion) less greasy than vegetable fat frying.

I am not against vegetable oils, which have their place, but I am definitely over using extra virgin olive oil as the base for everything. Olive oil tastes like olives, folks. Not everything needs to taste like olives!

It is easy-ish to collect small amounts of animal fat from your cooking to use later but only if you are doing things like homemade stock on a regular basis. I wouldn't buy it from the grocery store because I've heard, for example, that lard sold for pie crust purposes has been altered a bit to make it more solid. Luckily in Saskatoon (and most of Saskatchewan) it's not too difficult to come by a variety of simply rendered animal fats from very cleanly and humanely raised animals. Cool Springs Ranch sells pork, beef, and chicken fat for about $9/litre through their monthly pickup program and I will vouch for the great quality and flavour. While I haven't purchased from them, Farm One Forty(/Odla Restaurant) also sells pork lard and I'd assume it to be of similar quality. I'd guess some of the health food stores probably carry animal fats from local producers, but don't go driving around the city on my assumption only.

We have been using animal fats pretty regularly in our home cooking for several years. While I'm not here to defend it nutritionally, I haven't found it to be "bad for me" in any measurable quantity. What it does do very obviously is improve the quality of our homemade meals!